Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday August 26, 2013 @10:23AM
from the going-for-a-drive dept.

First time accepted submitter Dave Jurgensen writes "Uber has said it will be purchasing 2,500 of Google's self driving GX3200 cars to be used around America. They are hoping to have their first set of driverless cars on the road by the end of the year. From the article: 'Uber has committed to invest up to $375 million for a fleet of Google’s GX3200 vehicles, which are the company’s third generation of autonomous driving cars, but the first to be approved for commercial use in the U.S. The deal marks the largest single capital investment that Uber has made to date, and is also the first enterprise deal that Google has struck for its new line of driverless vehicles.'"Update: Yes, this is a piece of speculative fiction.

You mean one that automatically and effectively drives effectively and avoids obstacles? That doesn't seem very appropriate considering the number of random obstacles that the house has thrown up that Obama managed to crash into.

They will be far less likely to back over a kid, or confuse pedals like oldsters around here love to do. This is because the outside of the car can be covered in sensors instead of being a hinderance to visibility to the driver.

They will be far less likely to back over a kid, or confuse pedals like oldsters around here love to do. This is because the outside of the car can be covered in sensors instead of being a hinderance to visibility to the driver.

Really? statistically, what is the likelihood of a taxi backing over a kid or even being driven by a senior citizen. These are self driving cars for consumers, these are commercial vehicles such as taxis and delivery vehicles.

As for covering a vehicle in sensors instead of being a hindrance to visibility to the driver, the same visibility requirements exist for human driven vehicles and self-driven vehicles because humans have to be able to drive self-driven vehicles on occasion, so if you need to cover al

He wasn't suggesting covering the windows, but most humans only have 2 eyes. Autonomous cars can be looking in every direction, all at the same time. They can be watching the side mirror to make sure they are backing up straight AND the rear view mirror to make sure your unattended child didn't run behind the car AT THE SAME TIME. Personally, I view this as both a win for saving lives, and a loss for circumventing natural selection.

The google car already has over 300k miles on it without a single at-fault incident. Although I thought the law required a person to be in the car ready to assume control at all times?

I drive an original 1973 VW Beetle every day with over 300K miles on it without a single accident (at-fault or otherwise). I would not use that statistic to say that all VW Beetles are safe vehicles. Just because a small handful of these cars have been tested does not mean that they are safe in the real world. To do a proper study, you have to have a large enough sample size. Maybe that has been accomplished, because that probably only needs around 1,000 vehicles. However, testing those 1,000 vehicles in d

I've probably come close to driving around 300k in about 16 years and I have yet to have an accident. I HAVE had a number of close calls, and I will admit every now and then one of those close calls would have been my fault had there been an accident (legally and realistically).

Yes it is! Many of those miles are not cruising the freeway, but on a test track under conditions that were designed to cause an accident. Test dummies have been used to simulate pedestrians stepping into traffic. Other cars pull in front, or cut off the Google car, or drop objects onto the road. The self driving cars have been able to avoid thousands of accidents where a human would likely not have been able to react in time.

Yes it is! Many of those miles are not cruising the freeway, but on a test track under conditions that were designed to cause an accident. Test dummies have been used to simulate pedestrians stepping into traffic. Other cars pull in front, or cut off the Google car, or drop objects onto the road. The self driving cars have been able to avoid thousands of accidents where a human would likely not have been able to react in time.

So you are saying that the 300,000 miles is in a laboratory controlled environment instead of a real world environment? Boy that instills confidence, because we all know how realistic that is. I wonder how many Boeing 787 had battery fires in their controlled test environments instead of real world environment? I would hazard a guess of not too many or the problem would have been addressed before releasing the plane. Controlled tests can only go so far. Obviously if you fail the controlled ones you will fa

Noun1. An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.2. A crash involving road or other vehicles, typically one that causes serious damage or injury.

Accidents can also be caused by chance, but the word itself doesn't have to mean that. When someone says there was an accident somewhere, they aren't (necessarily) implying that nobody was to blame.

I think replacing human driven cars with these things would save a lot of lives.

Noun1. An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.2. A crash involving road or other vehicles, typically one that causes serious damage or injury.

Accidents can also be caused by chance, but the word itself doesn't have to mean that. When someone says there was an accident somewhere, they aren't (necessarily) implying that nobody was to blame.

I think replacing human driven cars with these things would save a lot of lives.

In risk management there is a big difference between incident and accident. When two airplanes fly too close (what is call a near-miss), that is an incident. If they actually hit, that is an accident. All accidents are incidents, but not all incidents are accidents. What is needed to evaluate the google car is the incident rate, not the accident rate. Why? To minimize accidents, you need to minimize incidents. If google cars are involved in a high rate of incidents, even if they avoid accidents, then the risk of an accident is high.

Think of it this way. Most teenagers do not have accidents, but they do have incidents. Accidents always occur from incidents, so insurance premiums are higher on teenage drivers. It is not the accident rate that is important in evaluating the self driving cars, it is the incident rate. Because even with low accidents, if there are high incidents eventually there will be high accidents.

Yet we call bandages "Band-Aids". We use a lift to go down. In the south they order a "Coke" when they're actually ordering Pepsi. It's common use has made it mean crash, even if it was on purpose. Hell, even the government accepts the terminology now: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf [census.gov]

Stop being such a pedant. If you know what someone means, and they communicate it in a generally accepted manner, there is no need to get uptight. It's the meaning of the words, not the actua

So, we should stop calling 13 year olds "children," and consensual sex with them "rape." They're "young adults" and what you had is "consensual sexual contact with a minor."

We really should; but the example tends to underscore certain emotional responses people have to meaning. Calling collisions and other vehicular incidents "accidents" disclaims responsibility. Accidents have consequences; accidents happen and that's okay, they can't be prevented and we should really accept them, nobody is wrong, we m

The technology Double Standard.If a person does it, they have a particular fault rate, if the rate is low enough they get credited as really good job.If a computer does it, and they have a fault rate that exceeds the human fault rate by good factors, and it still fails, the idea is a disaster.

In general people don't like giving up control, and doesn't like doing the math to see if they are better off.

The automated driver, has a key advantage, it doesn't get distracted from driving, its primary goal is to get you from point a to point b as safe as possible. It doesn't get distracted by those bad drivers it is just an obstacle to avoid, after it avoided it, it isn't getting all pissy from it. Or if it is stuck in traffic, it will just drive the same without getting stressed about getting late.

There are a few other links. So while you say 300,000 miles without a single at fault incident is not that good, it is almost twice what people do from the articles I can find.

While having any accidents will trigger panic and people screaming how terrible this is and how it should be banned, if people examine the data it says that at the present 300K we would reduce accidents by nearly 30%-50%. If it goes to 600K without an incident, we just reduced accidents and deaths to 25-30%% of what they were.

You simply cannot calculate the chance of having an accident that way. Driving 300,000 miles in Montana is going to be different than driving 300,000 miles in New York City. If you want accident statistic rates, one need look no further that auto insurance. If it was a matter of dividing total mileage by number of accidents, none of us could afford our premiums.

If your articles don't make sense. The first one, the pro google article (what would you expect them to tell you about the safety) claims that peo

Speaking as a traffic engineer, I'd like to inform you that we're not nearly that good. (mostly because most of our work is poorly funded by the government, so the results are barely adequate, at best). For example, the functional classification map (that labels streets as "local," "collector" or "arterial") for Atlanta was last updated around 1970 -- that's over forty years ago. And you think we have the reso

If the autopilots have a common database they can reference, if one vehicle has trouble with an area, it can be noted and placed on a GPS map, so subsequent vehicles can take precautions (such as changing to the left lane to avoid potholes, noting that bicycles tend to be on a road, so slow down at a crest of a hill, etc.)

Of course, this info can be hacked to cause abuse, but that that is a solvable problem.

Not that this will stop anyone the first time the car backs over a kid, despite their excellent safety record.

The Google cars have backup cameras, radar, and bump sensors. They have been specifically designed and tested to not run over kids/pets while backing, under many different light and weather conditions. So your scenario is very unlikely to happen.

A much more likely scenario: After self driving cars are common, some human driver backs over a kid, and people ask why we should continue to allow humans to drive.

But statistically, it'll probably be better than having humans behind the wheel. Not that this will stop anyone the first time the car backs over a kid, despite their excellent safety record.

Think about that. These are going to be used as taxis in New York. So, not only will you have to be able to get one, but it will have to figure out where you are going, whether you speak with an accent or not. Of course, you could just type your destination into your smart phone and forgo the talking, but if the car can't get the voice recognition algorithm correct, then that makes the safe driving algorithm suspect.

Then who is going stop all sort of stuff from happening in the back seat? Will the next pers

That they have a lower crash rate than humans and we are all forced to switch to them.

Not sure that is going wrong though.

If they can reduce the fatality rate, and the eventually will, it will not matter if different folks die only that less die. This is the same thing as vaccines. You trade X deaths for X/Y deaths, while those latter deaths are unlikely to be the same folks.

Not everyone is THAT money-grubbingly corrupt. I used to work with cops and traffic engineers and they care very much about public safety and are willing to spend their budgets to improve it. The press loves to point out the money-grubbers (and they exist) but most people are not that way.

The company hopes to have its first set of driverless cars on the road by the end of the year, introducing a new service called uberAUTO using those vehicles in one or two of its markets at first. Based on the reception there, Uber says it could have the service available in up to 10 markets by the end of next year.

Not sure what the "what could go wrong 10 years from now" has to do with anything. Apart from cars being hi-jacked remotely. Outside of that, everything else seems to be a plus over driven cars. I mean, I love driving for fun, but commuting is boring.

Ah, I see. Even if I'd read that (and I filter out dates at the start of articles just the same as I skip most Slashdot comment titles, unless the comment itself doesn't seem to make any sense), I maybe would have thought it was a typo. Well, that's pretty fucking lame. Guess we're stuck with manual cars for now.

One should note that we're inching towards driverless cars faster than you can imagine.

Things like cruise control were the first step. Now we have lane awareness (where it alerts you If you start to drift from your lane), forward accident detection and prevention (applies brakes if you start approaching an obstacle in front), auto-cruise control (keeps you paced with the car in front automatically), parallel parking assistance, radar, etc.

I have see playback from these sensors (not from a google car though) it is better than most any camera. IE it is a 3D representation that shows exact speed and direction + distance of everything around, overlaid with the actions the vehicle is attempting. About the only "issue" I see, is that dense fog/snow/rain can affect most of these sensors just about as bad as a person. The problem arises, that these vehicles will likely be programmed to not overdrive their visibility to stopping distance. Many pe

All it takes is one single person to get hit by one of these and they're illegal in 50 states. Since Toyota can't even get their software straight in a non-driverless car, I'm thinking this is going to be a disaster. Then there's security. Yeah, it's Google but still, someone needs to mass hack these cars and crash them to prove that auto makers and security is about as great a pair as a 2 year old and a grenade.

1. Incorrect, so long as it kills less people it will be fine.2. Toyota had a market problem not a software problem. They were simply old geezers confusing the pedals.3. there is no reason why good security could not be used in driverless cars.

I think the GP is right. Reasoning is that if there's one accident where a human is killed the media will exploded with stories of how cars are coming to life and killing everyone that gets near them.

I can also imagine people who oppose driverless cars will be going to great expense to try and trip them up, causing accidents. There are some people, that no matter how extensive the evidence is that driverless cars kill fewer people by huge margins, are going to try and stop their adoption. So many people are killed by human error while driving it doesn't even make the news anymore, but I guarantee one driverless car accident will be international headlines. Like 3D printers being used to print guns. Forget the fact they can do anything else like printing organs, food or prototyping innovative ideas. OMG they print guns quick start the presses the masses must know of this injustice.

While I would hope this is true, I would find it more likely that the news media would play the deaths up for their own gain and cause masses to have unfavorable opinions of the technology. A four year old dieing in a firey blaze because of something that the majority would probably already by distrustful of likely cause the technology to be banned or highly contrained, statistics be damned.

1. Incorrect, so long as it kills less people it will be fine.2. Toyota had a market problem not a software problem. They were simply old geezers confusing the pedals.3. there is no reason why good security could not be used in driverless cars.

Actually, the OP is probably correct about #1. He's not talking about logic, he's talking about human reaction.

All it will take is 1 robot-car to hit a single person and the news will have a field day. They will whip up the population into a frenzy with "Murderous robots on your highway? News at 11" Seriously, they will hit this issue HARD because in their view it's just all kinds of s*xy... Robots, death, fear-of-the-unknown, making-the-news-team-seem-sympathetic, etc.

"Skynet ran over my dog!" GP is right in that such an accident will be a marketing disaster... but it will only be a temporary one. However I am less worried about PR than about pet owners or parents suing the crap out of Google. If a human driver runs over your kid, there's only so much cash to be had from the driver, besides a jury might well rule that it was an accident and that the driver was not at fault. But in case of driverless cars, an accident translates readily into a defective product in the

A slightly better one would be an auto insurance company suing Google (or it's holding company / subsidiary or whatever legal arrangement they make). Then it's lawyer on lawyer action (ewwww....). Still and all, you have to think that Google's admin team has figured this out. After all, we did. And made suitable arrangements.

Being an old geezer, I take a bit of exception to this. In addition, the fatal crash that started Toyota's problems had no old geezers.. You can listen to the rather horrifying 911 call here. [consumerist.com]

As an aside, agism is just as bad as sexism, racism, homophobism, etc. Oh, and by the way, you'll be one, too.

Think of the billions of dollars this will save all the big corporations that require road transportation. This is going to get rammed through the legal system, and rammed as hard as campaign cash can ram it.

In future and today you can use self-driving car, at least in urban areas. They are called buses, trams and commuter rail. They work quite perfectly. In addition there are taxis. All these means of transportation work fine for elderly people (at least if they use modern equipment). And yes, I know they are not driver-less, but you do not have to drive yourself and in certain cities commuter rail services are already really driver-less, like in London or Nuremberg.

Public transit is a very sub-par replacement for owning your own vehicle to go where you want when you want. The's a bus stop right across from my house, but it takes two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening commuting to work everyday by bus. It's fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes in the evening by car and there are a number of other inconveniences I don't have to deal with. Like not being allowed to take my coffee on the bus, spending an hour waiting for a bus that's suppose to come every fifteen minutes, not having dirty sick scummy rude people coughing and sneezing allover me everyday and whenever I decide to go for a longer trip to Ontario, North Carolina or the hour and a half drive to my in-laws I can come and go as I please.

Cabs are acceptable for a once in awhile thing, but are too expensive to use on a regular basis.

While Google navigation does a great job of getting a person with a smart phone, and ability to use it around on multiple transfers. I am not sure that people too blind to drive are going to do well roaming around in the streets trying to see, is that the #5 or the #6 bus.From what I see currently most Americans just give up traveling (at least without a able companion) at this point in life, if the driver-less vehicle gives a familiar trusted enclosure, that always knows how to get me home no matter how f

In future and today you can use self-driving car, at least in urban areas. They are called buses, trams and commuter rail. They work quite perfectly. In addition there are taxis. All these means of transportation work fine for elderly people (at least if they use modern equipment). And yes, I know they are not driver-less, but you do not have to drive yourself and in certain cities commuter rail services are already really driver-less, like in London or Nuremberg.

There's more, too. How scarey is it that this is being reported as news elsewhere based on an article from TechCrunch that opens with a date ten years in the future in bold letters? They didn't just not investigate, they didn't read the article they then based their own articles on. At this point, I'd be surprised if it wasn't on Fox tonight.

Not since they upgraded to the new JohnnyDot editorless publishing system. If you turn the sound up on your computer while submitting a story, you'll hear Robert Picardo's voice [wikipedia.org] asking, "Please state the nature of the stuff that matters emergency."

(Picardo's voiced the JohnnyCab robot in Total Recall, and his face was used as the model for the robot. He also played the holographic doctor on Voyager and the robotic bureaucrat who thought he could run Stargate Atlantis.)

In any case, the current crop of Google Cars might have good stats, but they are stats generated under very controlled situations, such as not in rush hour LA traffic. Or rush hour downtown city traffic.

I've said this many times before, but when CmdrTaco left, it was the beginning of the end for Slashdot. The writing was on the wall for a long time before that, but Malda's departure was a very clear demarcation of where the site was headed. We're witnessing a slow death spiral. Within 10-20 years, Slashdot will no longer exist in its current form. It will be gobbled up by Gizmodo, Techcrunch, CNet, or the likes, and eventually merged into their conglomerate and redirected to the parent company's site.

I see the benefit of driverless cars, but people need jobs too. We need to think about that when we eliminate jobs instead of demonizing the unemployed. If companies and society are putting these people out of work, we need to do something. Our increasing productivity is producing a class of unemployable people. IMO, If we don't want that, we should hire these people to do what robots could.

We don't need jobs. We need food. We need shelter. Jobs are a means for which we obtain the resources to obtain those things. If robots can do everything, we can live in a very different kind of economy, basically proto-Star Trek. Don't ruin that with the notion that we need jobs.

Actually, psychologically, we do need jobs or at least meaningful tasks. However, we do need to rethink how we allocate the fundamental necessities given greater and greater productivity from less and less labor. We also need to think about what we do with human potential if we reach a place where labor isn't necessarily tied to survival.

I'll agree with meaningful tasks as being important, but that doesn't necessarily translate to jobs in the sense we know them today. We could devote our time to self enrichment, artistic expression, and other such tasks in ways that we never could before because they aren't financially viable. Our tasks would have more meaning to us, leaving us more fulfilled. Now, that's not to say that there aren't going to be issues, especially in the transitional phase, but they are relatively minor in comparison to

So long as there is a single *job* that has to be done by humans, we all have to be concerned with jobs.

This is one of the reason why I'm a big proponent of work sharing as opposed to welfare.

Just picture yourself as one of America's corporate workers today. Slugging it out in brutal competition, 50 hour work weeks, being push and push to squeeze out every last ounce of productivity... and then being told... we need to tax you more to give some people free money... hey relax... it's good for you, they will

When robots can do a task faster, cheaper, and more reliably than humans, it's inevitable that they will be replaced.

People have been fearing machines causing long-term and large scale unemployment since the cotton gin... history shows that actual unemployment increases caused by replacing workers with automation are not anywhere nearly as massive as was feared by some beforehand, but also extremely temporary.

I think that for every displaced worker, some kind of habitation and space should be set aside for these newly unemployable. If they are essentially being made redundant to the continuation of the human species maybe a reserve is where they belong. I'm thinking along the lines of intentional communities, not ghettos. Very open, no support provided but also no economic output expected. Just put them out on nice fertile land where they can thrive outside of the hustle and bustle. No they won't be sterili

I can forsee a state where older drivers who can no longer safely drive themselves can maintain a portion of their independence by using these to be able to get around without requiring someone else to taxi them from place to place. Simple destinations such as family member's homes, stores, doctor and medical offices, and other common destinations could be pre-programmed into the vehicle's memory, with a simple menu to select a destination. A "specify your destination" feature could be used for those who re

I read the article, but didn't note the date - so I was rather confused by a story about some mega-delivery company I'd never heard of that mentioned facts that weren't remotely true!

But, even in 2023... How is this supposed to work? They're a delivery company - are the customers supposed to be on the honor system, coming out to the curb and taking only the packages addressed to them? The basic idea doesn't really work, unless the car also has fold-out legs and can walk up to the door...

I've thought, since first seeing the google car, that zip car would do well to have a fleet of them. A car that arrives where and when you need it and drops you off... it's perfect for them. And they can offer rate plans. If you don't want to spend premium and be the only person in that car with a single destination you can opt to have up to 3 other people coordinated with your ride.

Likewise, Amazon, could do well to use them for delivery on their same day service. If you click on a button saying you'll

Check out who was fooled by this article, maybe use Google to dig up a few more...
http://www.designntrend.com/articles/7363/20130826/report-2-500-google-robo-taxi-driverless-cars-will-take.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2402047/Would-hail-cab-driven-ROBOT-Rumours-Googles-self-driving-cars-day-form-robo-taxi-service.html
http://www.efinancehub.com/uber-has-decided-to-invest-up-to-375-million-for-google-inc-nasdaqgoogs-gx3200-sedans/122229.html

Although this article is a spoof it should point to another issue. We are well aware that robotic transport is close at hand on a large scale. And this is a perfect example of an issue that no one is confronting. As it has occurred in other trades we will see misery applied to a very large number of professional drivers. They will simply be out of work, permanently. And then there is a ripple effect. The diners that serve truckers, cab drivers and others will close or lay off workers. Motels will do the same. Even sales of items such as CB radios could take a hit.
I would not be overly shocked to learn that robotic vehicles displaced five million workers in the US. Although nobody is entitled to earn a living we will have to create an economic system that makes certain that all people are well paid without regard for whether they work or not. People without good pay checks can not purchase nor can they pay taxes. Unemployment and under employment will shift the tax burdens to those who work and it will also collapse or limit the income of businesses leading to an ever deepening, chronic poverty.
We are now confronted with a social reality that forces a sea change in our economic and political beliefs. We have no options at all other than to create a very socialistic society. Human labor, whether physical or mental, is in decline as far as value is concerned. I strongly suspect that our youth have glimpsed that which explains their lack of concern with education and their willingness to participate in activities likely to destroy them whether that be surfing a thirty foot wave, racing a motorcycle or shooting heroin.

Stop all the talk and just get these things on the road. The sooner the concept fails the sooner we can move on. I also don't want to see a post to ONE car driving safely down the road, I want to see a highway where 40-50% of the cars are autonomous intermingling with some of the dumbest drivers on the planet.

I'd rather strap myself into a coffin and be shot across the country in a big metal straw before I get into an autonomous car driving down the highway with other humans..

...for these to become common in states like Massachusetts. The amount of anger from the average driver in that state would be incredible to see (having to sit behind a car that is programmed to strictly adhere to the posted speed limit, not try to beat red lights, and will not respond to any form of road rage directed towards it).

I really don't see how these vehicles can actually work in real-live driving situations...
Supposing there is an accident, or other temporary traffic re-routing... the local cop wants you to roll down your window, and he is going to TELL you where to drive to get around this obstruction...
Or deer running across the street... I'm sure VERY hard to detect (I can barely see them myself coming off from the side...)
Or small things in the road that you want to avoid (potholes, glass, etc)
Or avoiding certai

Instead of a cab driver there is a cab "minder". He sits in the front but doesn't touch the controls. Instead his only job is lift people's bags into the trunk and chat with the passengers. He is a temp worker at 30 hours a week, paid minimum wage (+ the temp agency's cut).

All of those people who have no skills beyond their meager abilities to process sensory input and turn the results into mechanical action. All of them replaced by machines and possibly minimum wage, no-benefits, temp workers.

Yeah, right. Once elevators got buttons, how long did we keep elevator operators around? Same with cabs.
Another quarter million on the government teat.